A 784 base pair fragment from the flanking non-coding or intronic region of Eaat1 is fused upstream of a Drosophila core synthetic promoter (DSCP) followed by sequence encoding a lexA::p65 driver. The driver sequence has been optimized for Drosophila codon usage. An Hsp70 transcriptional terminator is present.
Ecol\lexAGMR75H11 drives expression in the same glial cells as Scer\GAL4Eaat1.PR, although slightly fewer in number. Expression also overlaps with Scer\GAL4mir-bft-Gal4 in a small number of glia in the adult cerebrum, cervical connective and thoracico-abdominal ganglion, with Scer\GAL4NP6520 and Scer\GAL4[alrm.PD] in ensheathing neuropil associated glial cell and reticular neuropil associated glial cell respectively.
Although alleles from the Janelia Farm lexA driver collection incorporate the same enhancer fragments used to create the Janelia Farm GAL4 driver alleles (GMR_Brain_exp_1), significant differences are frequently observed in the expression pattern of a given enhancer fragment inserted in the P{CaryP}attP40 or other docking site compared to the same fragment inserted in the P{CaryP}attP2 docking site. Generally the Ecol\lexA patterns are subsets of the Scer\GAL4 patterns.